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What’s Going On With “Crash Bandicoot”?

Recent rumblings in the industry seem to suggest that Sony may’ve bought the rights to their original console mascot, Crash Bandicoot, back from Activision. The speculation appears to coincide with a number of strange events: first, Activision’s Crash Bandicoot website has been taken down and all its mentions otherwise removed from the company’s digital presence.

More interesting is a UK PS4 launch trailer, which features, alongside launch game iconography, a number of references to games or series that will assumedly have some next-gen announcements coming soon.

Among them, you can see what looks like the silhouette of Crash on a street sign positioned below an arrow pointing to a second sign that looks suspiciously the original Sony Computer Entertainment logo that accompanied the PS One’s launch. (Not only that, but the street sign placement on the set is cleverly placed above what looks like a green recycling bin [check at about 0:46].)

When asked about the possibility of Crash returning to the Playstation fold, Sony’s Adam Boyes tweeted that inquiring minds should ask Activision, since they own the license. But when Videogamer editor David Scammell did just that, Activision apparently replied with a terse “No comment.”

After parting ways with Sony, the Crash license was bandied around to various hands before largely being reduced to irrelevancy in Activision’s stable. Naughty Dog’s original games were treasures of the PS One – if Sony has indeed re-acquired the license from the Call of Duty publisher, perhaps we might see a little bit of that old Bandicoot action again on PS4.

For those of us that were in middle school with the original Crash, fingers are crossed – though in this business, industry rumors like this are rarely far from the truth. Keep it here for more on this story as it develops.